Tragedy

This has been a tough week for our whole family. My cousin John Edward Rielly, 18, was killed in a tragic car accident. The weeks leading up to this car crash were almost equally as hard for his parents and our family. This year John had dropped out of school, his senior year. He moved out and into a home with his girlfriend and her parents, against his parents wishes. John began doing drugs. At my grandmother's funeral in March, he looked like death. His face was sucken in, he was thinner than ever and looked awful. Our whole family agreed he must be on drugs. Well the week before last he was driving around our neighborhood, and I must tell you everyone on our road is either family or friends, so he was spotted walking up and down the road and driving up and down our road with two cars full of his friends. He asked a couple neighbors for money. We were all worried. The first place a drug addict will go for money or steal from is family. Well the next day his parents found their guns were missing. His mother somehow got him to the crisis center at the hospital where he tested positive for heroine, meth and pot. John tried escaping from the hospital, but was caught fairly quickly due to the fact he had no shoes or shirt. The hospital sent him to a near by rehab center. Choices (the rehab center) kept John for 5 days before releasing him. Just my opinion, but it takes more than 5 days to get off of heroine and meth. On Sunday morning I recieved a phone call from my cousin Kara, Johns aunt, who told us the horrible news. John had died in a car crash. At 7 am he had been driving erratically passed a car crash. The police decided to chase him. He tried passing another car and hit another state trooper head on. John was ejected from the car and died from internal injuries. The other boy in the car died in the fiery blaze, and the trooper was life flighted to a hospital nearby for emergency surgery. Well, each day we learn a little more. Not from the police, but from the tv and the newspaper. They just released the other boys name yesterday, Matthew Harrison, 19. The boys sister called my cousin Kelly, Johns mother and told her that they were leaving her house. She lived 3 miles from the site of the crash. She also said that her brother not John was driving. The sister also told Kelly that John had confessed to the police that he stole the guns. The police called John and told him that if he returned the guns then his parents would not press charges. This is what John was doing when the police were chasing him. He had gone to this girls house and picked up the guns to take back to his parents, and ironically they somehow got chased by the police and got in a car accident. So instead of John being alive right now and getting help we will be putting him in a grave.

I believe that the system has failed John. Choices should have kept John in the hospital and helped him to get clean. My cousin Kelly begged them to keep him. The police should have arrested him for stealing the guns, but they had no proof. Then when he confessed they should have arrested him instead of telling him to return the guns. If they arrested him he would have been off the streets and able to detox in jail. The police also should have not chased these two teenage boys who they thought were acting funny. They said the two slammed on their breaks as they were driving past another accident, but did not stop. They had no reason to chase them, they could have followed the boys until they got the license plate number and followed up with them later. Now there are two boys dead and a trooper who may never walk again. I am not saying John was innocent, he had made a lot of bad choices lately, but he was trying to right a wrong. He didn't need to lose his life.